In: Operations Management
How does Henkel, the German consumer and commercial products company, generate & screen new product ideas? What is your opinion of that screening method? Discuss the case of Enron & speed of new venture development as discussed in one of the assigned readings for this week. In hindsight, what did you learn from that case?
Answer:
Henkel, the German consumer and commercial products company, generate & screen new product ideas as per their process of idea generation and idea screening in the Henkel organization.
Henkel Idea Generation Process: Henkel do not develop new products, but they are able to launch new brands and products of the company that owns in the Portugal country. Thus the Henkel Company explores the launching of new products and brands in the market under their organization marketing approaches. Thus Henkel launches new products by launching other products and brands in the market.
Henkel Idea Screening Process: Henkel screening process is very simple and it makes the use of business case on each new product/brand launch and reviews the business case for its suitability to their organization and then takes the right decision for the same. This helps in screening the new products and brand ideas. Henkel uses the Gate process for screening and at each gate the screen criteria are fixed and those criteria help for screening the new product /brand ideas.
Our opinion on screening method: Our opinion is that the process the Henkel Company uses for idea screening is adequate. The ideas are screen based on the business case, which is the right approach and one should explore such option only. This approach ensures that the efforts the organization is going to add will not be waste and they will get good returns.
Discussion on case of Enron & speed of new venture development as discussed in one of the assigned readings for this week : This was one of the scandal case on business ethics. The Enron scandal case was considered as one of the most notorious and compelling business ethics case in the given modern environment. Initially the case looks like a dream for many people but later it turns into the nightmare for many people. Enron scandal was the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation as American company based at Houstan, Texas, US
Learning from hindsight case: We learn from the case that the legally innocent liability needs to be review properly by legal administration. There are biases available in the legal cases. So biasing needs to be checked and ensured that biasing are not present in the legal cases.